Site Progress at West Fraser’s Inverness Rail Siding

This week the team have been up at West Fraser’s OSB Mill in Inverness visiting our rail siding project.

The plan is to build a dedicated rail freight terminal/sidings, linking it to the mainline railway (the Aberdeen–Inverness line), so that raw materials and finished products can be transported by rail instead of by road.

The project includes two rail sidings (each about 560 m long), a connection to the main rail line, a concrete hard standing for container storage, an access road, parking, drainage/landscaping, and a gantry crane (or reach-stacker) to handle loading/unloading of containers.

The main aim is sustainability: by shifting freight from lorries (HGVs) onto rail, the company expects to significantly reduce carbon emissions — about 9,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year in the first phase.

It would also ease pressure on local roads — the project could remove roughly 20,000 HGV journeys from the road network each year, improving road safety, reducing traffic, noise and road wear.

In the longer term (full build-out), the plan could remove up to 40,000 HGV movements annually, potentially eliminating around 60% of the site’s current lorry traffic.

For the wider region, the project is expected to reduce millions of lorry-miles over the next decade — for example, over 10 years the new terminal could eliminate more than 8.5 million lorry-miles on Scottish roads, and over 17 million across the UK.

For a 3D look around of the project as it stands click the link below;

https://kuula.co/share/hSl8L?logo=1&info=0&fs=1&vr=1&sd=1&initload=0&thumbs=1